Building Pando: A CMO’s Framework for Founding a B2B Tech Company
Why don’t more CMOs become founders? In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Barbra Gago, founder of Pando, challenged the notion that technical backgrounds are prerequisites for founding successful tech companies. Her journey from marketing leader to founder reveals unique advantages that marketing executives bring to company building.
The Marketing Leader’s Edge
“I feel like marketers would be set up to be very strong CEOs,” Barbra explains. Why? Because effective marketing leaders are “deep in customer engagements, customer pain points, understanding, spending time with customers, understanding how to position and sell the product, hopefully holding themselves accountable to revenue generation directly.”
This customer-centric perspective, combined with revenue accountability, creates a strong foundation for company building. But there’s more to it than just customer understanding.
The Early-Stage Operator’s Mindset
“I’ve been a serial early stage operator throughout my career,” Barbra notes. “I’ve been in pretty much b2b tech the whole time, joining companies pre series a and working to build the initial foundation for scaling up and usually sticking around until maybe series c and two 3400 employees.”
This experience at early-stage companies provided crucial insights into company building. “I’ve been really operating at kind of ground zero for so long that I think a lot of that savvy of what we should do and what we should focus on and how to think about the company and marketing and branding early on also was helpful.”
The Path to Founding
Unlike many founders who launch companies immediately after identifying a problem, Barbra took a more measured approach. “I didn’t start a company sooner because I really wanted to learn as much as possible,” she explains. Her time at Miro was particularly valuable, offering exposure to “the PLG and sales motion kind of combined.”
This patient approach to founding reflects a broader trend in her career. “I have always wanted to be a founder. It’s been my dream. I feel like I’m in my dream job. It’s so hard and I love it. I’ve always been very entrepreneurial.”
Cross-Functional Leadership
Marketing leaders develop crucial skills through “a lot of cross functional collaboration, just given the type of work that marketing is.” This experience proves invaluable when building and leading a company, especially in navigating complex stakeholder relationships.
Her background provided unique perspectives on category creation and positioning. At Greenhouse, this meant understanding when to create a new category versus when to elevate an existing one. “Creating a new category when they already had a budget for an existing category didn’t really make sense because then where’s the budget for that new category?”
Building for Scale
The CMO experience also provides insights into scaling companies. “I think as a CMO, there’s a lot of pressure to understand so much of the business if you’re focused on driving revenue,” Barbra notes. This comprehensive business understanding helps in making strategic decisions about product development, market positioning, and growth strategies.
For Pando, this translated into a clear vision for the future: “I really want to build kind of the ecosystem where levels are sort of a bit more standardized and calibrated so you can go from company to company with that kind of context.”
For other marketing leaders considering the founder journey, Barbra’s experience offers a compelling framework. Success in founding doesn’t necessarily require deep technical expertise – instead, it requires a deep understanding of customers, markets, and business fundamentals. These are precisely the skills that marketing leaders develop throughout their careers.
The key is leveraging these advantages while being prepared to tackle new challenges. As Barbra’s journey shows, marketing leadership can provide an unexpected but powerful foundation for founding and scaling successful B2B tech companies.